L.A. streets aren't safe enough for cyclists, but we're getting there

CicLAvia

Los Angeles Times

The city of Los Angeles is striping more bike lanes and increasing the visibility of crosswalks in an effort to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Above, a cyclist walks her bike in downtown L.A. during last month's CicLAvia.

The city of Los Angeles is striping more bike lanes and increasing the visibility of crosswalks in an effort to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Above, a cyclist walks her bike in downtown L.A. during last month's CicLAvia. (Los Angeles Times)

As The Times' Paul Whitefield points out in his Oct. 24 post saying there's little hope for making L.A.'s streets safer for cylists, there's Hollywood, and there's real life. And in real-life Los Angeles County, nearly 1 in 4 trips does not involve an automobile.

How can this be in our notoriously car-addled city? Angelenos are looking for options and finding them in our burgeoning Metro system, our sometimes-broken sidewalks and, yes, our expanding bike network. Since adopting its Bicycle Plan in 2011, the city of Los Angeles has doubled its bike lane miles and been recognized as a Bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community for this and other accomplishments.

Anecdotal evidence aside, Whitefield is right that Los Angeles is not yet safe enough for people getting around under their own power, whether on two wheels or two feet. Although 19% of trips in the county are on foot or on bike, 39% of our roadway fatalities are people walking and biking.

L.A.'s streets are by and large not designed with the safety of our most vulnerable travelers in mind. We still use car-centric design standards instead of those common in urban areas with better safety records. L.A. is only beginning to experiment with advanced bike facilities routinely found in New York, Chicago and elsewhere. We spend only 1% of transportation dollars on walking and biking combined, far disproportionate to the percentage of trips made by cyclists and pedestrians. There is clearly much work to do.

Meanwhile, the Bicycle Coalition's Active Streets L.A. program is engaging communities around making neighborhood streets safe and pleasant places to walk and bike.

L.A. County’s leaders have an opportunity to build on this incredible momentum by investing in safer streets. All these plans, initiatives and programs are only as valuable as the funding dedicated to implementing them. Garcetti’s transportation vision will depend on his ability to work with Metro to prioritize investments in walking and biking.

L.A.'s streets are not yet safe enough, but we don't need to throw up our hands in despair. Just as we can rebuild the rail system we were all too eager to abandon, we can modernize our streets to serve all who use them. One-day events like CicLAvia demonstrate Angelenos' incredible hunger for safe places to walk and bike.

Instead of debating who gets the short end of the stick when trying to share streets designed in the 1960s, we should all be demanding streets that reflect the way we want to get around in this century.

This post is part of an ongoing conversation to explore how the city’s cyclists, drivers and pedestrians share and compete for road space, and to consider policy choices that keep people safe and traffic flowing. For more: latimes.com/roadshare and #roadshareLA.

Los Angeles drivers are protective of their road space, an attitude made clear by the three letters published Thursday admonishing cyclists to follow traffic laws strictly and to get out of the way of faster cars in exchange for a state law giving them three feet of protection from passing...

Motorists unite! An advisory initiative on San Francisco's November ballot urges city leaders to reverse their public transit and bicycle-friendly policies. Because 79% of households in the city have a car, proponents argue, wouldn't it make more sense to dedicate more money to helping cars...

A California law requiring drivers to maintain a distance of three feet when passing cyclists on the road goes into effect next week. The Three Feet for Safety Act, passed last year by the Legislature, is the latest sign of an important cultural shift in a state famously dominated by...

Anyone who pedals her bike on the road rightly expects to enjoy the full protection of the law. Tragically, the San Francisco district attorney’s decision this week not to press charges against a driver who was obviously — as in, there’s video evidence — at fault in a...

After months of uncertainty, Los Angeles’ first “complete street” will move forward: Three miles of Figueroa Street will be transformed from a thoroughfare for cars into a route that serves cars, buses, bicycles and pedestrians equally.